This invention relates to mooring attachments for signal point mooring terminals.
Oil handling installations located in bodies of water often utilize permanently attached vessels to store and/or process oil. Such vessels are typically permanently moored to a buoy that is held in a fixed location, and hoses extend between the buoy and the vessel to carry oil between them.
Prior art mooring attachments for holding the vessel to the buoy, have included rigid yokes, each yoke having a narrow end connected to the buoy and a split end connected to the vessel. The split, or bifurcated end permitted the vessel to move in pitch (its bow moving up and down) but prevented the vessel from yawing to thereby prevent it from jackknifing. U.S. Pat. No. 4,010,500 shows (in FIG. 4 thereof) a yoke of this type. Such a yoke is necessarily heavy to provide the bending resistance necessary to resist yawing of the vessel or sideward movement of the buoy. The large weight of the yoke, and the fact that considerable sideward forces are transmitted to the buoy when the vessel tends to yaw, are undesirable characteristics of the prior art mooring attachments.